Home Server OS Recommendations

[Adelzu]

So i built a new PC, Yay!

My older gaming laptop (Still in a good shape, and still quite powerful) is now idle. Specs as follows:

6700HQ

GTX 980M

64GB RAM

256 NVME + 1TB SSD

 

I'm planning on using this PC as a server/entertainment device, connected to a TV in my living room.

So i need to be able to:

1) stream games of my new PC for a console like experience.

2) create VMs (Linux and Windows).

3) run docker (for work, offloading from the new PC)

 

At home, we use cloud backup, and online media streaming. So a plex server or a backup server is not something we care about.

One of the VMs will be running moonshine (4K games streaming). So i need a GPU passthrough

 

What bare metal OS is the best for this scenario? i am looking at both FreeNas and Unraid. But not sure which to chose, and unaware of other better options to consider.

 

What do you think?

[GorujoCY]

Most people actually recommend unraid because of its feature sets and how easy it is to use it.

 

As for cloud gaming and stuff, If you wanna go DIY, Does your laptop have thunderbolt? You can get a thunderbolt eGPU and then use KVM and pass all the graphics processing through it, if not, if you could open it up and if you see one of these empty m.2 slots, Get an EXP GDC M.2, A new GPU and try ti pass that GPU Through using KVM, at least that's what I would recommend. also I don't think the 6700HQ is enough for such loads imo as it depends on how many dockers and vms you wanna run, you can only run at least 1 KVM if you plan on turning it into a gaming server, if not you can run at least 2 VMs on 2 cores, then you could split the ram divided by 2 (I would recommend at least 4 GB each machine so you better upgrade your ram), the story goes on...

 

As for the OS, Of course you are gonna use linux if you wanna successfully get such tasks done, unless you are asking for distros but refer above first and then decide to build a server/workstation if you want to make such tasks

[Applefreak]

7 minutes ago, Adelzu said:

So i built a new PC, Yay!

My older gaming laptop (Still in a good shape, and still quite powerful) is now idle. Specs as follows:

6700HQ

GTX 980M

64GB RAM

256 NVME + 1TB SSD

 

I'm planning on using this PC as a server/entertainment device, connected to a TV in my living room.

So i need to be able to:

1) stream games of my new PC for a console like experience.

2) create VMs (Linux and Windows).

3) run docker (for work, offloading from the new PC)

 

At home, we use cloud backup, and online media streaming. So a plex server or a backup server is not something we care about.

One of the VMs will be running moonshine (4K games streaming). So i need a GPU passthrough

 

What bare metal OS is the best for this scenario? i am looking at both FreeNas and Unraid. But not sure which to chose, and unaware of other better options to consider.

 

What do you think?

Both options you have listed are already feature loaded. If you want to click instead of write (meaning console commands), sure. For a fast and clean system, use Debian or if you want a bit newer features Ubuntu Server. FreeNAS and unRAID ar both good choices so is OMV as in openmediavault (which I use) but those are meant for in home data backup and storage. unRAID ist the better option among them. Kind of depends on what you are trying to achive. I'd go with Debian as it runs well even on old Intel Atom and Celeron single core CPUs, very low on resources compared to anything else while still maintaining good driver support. Ubuntu Server generally uses newer drivers and advanced features that have not been baked into Debian (the mother OS of Ubuntu if you will) as they have not yet matured enough. You then want to compile each program that you use on that machine. There are guides on the internet on howto. The advantage is that the application won't have features for other architectures ans stuff you don't need built into, thus reducing the amount of resources necessary. I haven't used unRAID extensively for your described purpose yet. It might be easier to set up while also having features you will have no use for baked in. If you can live with that, maybe try it out. Using it on a single machine is not that expensive anyways. One more thing. If your laptop has USB 3 ports (I would assume so), get USB 3 enclosures and put 3.5 inch drives in them for storage. Writing to the internal SSD form mulitple VMs is a bit risky. I'd use the SSD for the home folder (user directory) and for caching maybe. The large files should be on hard drives. If possible, with each VM having their own drive, if they are active on the same time.

[Adelzu]

1 minute ago, GorujoCY said:

Most people actually recommend unraid because of its feature sets and how easy it is to use it.

 

As for cloud gaming and stuff, If you wanna go DIY, Does your laptop have thunderbolt? You can get a thunderbolt eGPU and then use KVM and pass all the graphics processing through it, if not, if you could open it up and if you see one of these empty m.2 slots, Get an EXP GDC M.2, A new GPU and try ti pass that GPU Through using KVM, at least that's what I would recommend. also I don't think the 6700HQ is enough for such loads imo as it depends on how many dockers and vms you wanna run, you can only run at least 1 KVM if you plan on turning it into a gaming server, if not you can run at least 2 VMs on 2 cores, then you could split the ram divided by 2 (I would recommend at least 4 GB each machine so you better upgrade your ram), the story goes on...

I think i didn't explain the gaming part well.

The laptop will not run the games, it will run the Moonlight client to stream the games of the more powerful 5900X/RTX3080 PC in the other room. So the laptop will be a gaming client, not server. However, it will be outputing a 4K signal to the TV.

 

The laptop does have TB3 and an extra M.2 slot. But i don't think i need to use any of these since the 980M is capable of outputting the 4K signal and it wouldn't have to render the frames.

 

[Adelzu]

2 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

Both options you have listed are already feature loaded. If you want to click instead of write (meaning console commands), sure. For a fast and clean system, use Debian or if you want a bit newer features Ubuntu Server. FreeNAS and unRAID ar both good choices so is OMV as in openmediavault (which I use) but those are meant for in home data backup and storage. unRAID ist the better option among them. Kind of depends on what you are trying to achive. I'd go with Debian as it runs well even on old Intel Atom and Celeron single core CPUs, very low on resources compared to anything else while still maintaining good driver support. Ubuntu Server generally uses newer drivers and advanced features that have not been baked into Debian (the mother OS of Ubuntu if you will) as they have not yet matured enough. You then want to compile each program that you use on that machine. There are guides on the internet on howto. The advantage is that the application won't have features for other architectures ans stuff you don't need built into, thus reducing the amount of resources necessary. I haven't used unRAID extensively for your described purpose yet. It might be easier to set up while also having features you will have no use for baked in. If you can live with that, maybe try it out. Using it on a single machine is not that expensive anyways. One more thing. If your laptop has USB 3 ports (I would assume so), get USB 3 enclosures and put 3.5 inch drives in them for storage. Writing to the internal SSD form mulitple VMs is a bit risky. I'd use the SSD for the home folder (user directory) and for caching maybe. The large files should be on hard drives. If possible, with each VM having their own drive, if they are active on the same time.

Thanks for the advice.

I will not be storing any media on the laptop though. The VMs will be of small type (SQL Server light use for development, maybe other databases, web server for testing...etc. Nothing of heavy load). I'm not worried about the SSD capabilities, and i'm not worried about data loss. if the SSD gives up in a year or 2, that's fine, i'll just replace it and rebuild. Nothing permanent is going into that laptop.

[GorujoCY]

6 minutes ago, Adelzu said:

I think i didn't explain the gaming part well.

The laptop will not run the games, it will run the Moonlight client to stream the games of the more powerful 5900X/RTX3080 PC in the other room. So the laptop will be a gaming client, not server. However, it will be outputing a 4K signal to the TV.

 

The laptop does have TB3 and an extra M.2 slot. But i don't think i need to use any of these since the 980M is capable of outputting the 4K signal and it wouldn't have to render the frames.

 

oh, I was wondering, why don't you try Steam Link? it also has remote play together for supported games alltho I'm thinking, are you also going to stream outside of steam in order for you to use Moonlight client

[Adelzu]

4 minutes ago, GorujoCY said:

oh, I was wondering, why don't you try Steam Link? it also has remote play together for supported games alltho I'm thinking, are you also going to stream outside of steam in order for you to use Moonlight client

I tried Steam, it didn't stream well. it was slow, stutters a lot, very bad latency. While moonlight was perfect. I really don't know why steam link didn't work well (didn't even try to investigate it), but that's what happened.

[GorujoCY]

5 minutes ago, Adelzu said:

I tried Steam, it didn't stream well. it was slow, stutters a lot, very bad latency. While moonlight was perfect. I really don't know why steam link didn't work well (didn't even try to investigate it), but that's what happened.

interesting, Have you tried Parsec as well? is it the same behavior? I know linus used parsec for his team but you may like it as well...

as for previously, Yeah I understand now and it's a great idea imo for gaming, alltho for the rest of the tasks I kinda stand out to what I said and our other dude Applefreak